Starting [in 1997], the girls who perform best in Vietnam's national
mathematics olympiads will be awarded the Cora Ratto de Sadosky Prize.
Named in memory of an Argentinian mathematician and political activist, the prize is sponsored by Vietnam's Ministry of
Education and Training, the Vietnam Women's Union, the Kovalevskaia Fund, and
the Sadosky family.

In Vietnam, the national olympiad is held in March. The Sadosky prizes
will be awarded in April or May, when the best-performing students
from all over the country gather in Hanoi to take the final qualifying
test used to select Vietnam's team for the International Olympiad (which,
coincidentally, will be held in Argentina in 1997).

In the past, of the approximately 400 students who have taken the national
olympiad each year, only about 10% have been girls. We hope and expect that
this proportion will increase substantially as a result of publicity about the
Sadosky Prize. There are many thousands of top-notch female math students in
the secondary schools\break throughout Vietnam. With more encouragement from
their teachers and parents, many more of them would take part in the
competition.

In 1997 four Sadosky Prizes will be given, one for $150 and three for
$100. Each winner will also receive a certificate signed by representatives
of the three sponsoring organizations and the Sadosky family. One of the four
winners will be chosen from the mountainous regions. The educational system
in those areas is at a lower level than in the cities and lowlands, and so a
separate, somewhat easier version of the national olympiad is organized for
the highlands.

Vietnam is not, of course, the only country with inexcusably low levels
of female participation in the math olympiads. In most countries, in fact,
there is a need for concrete steps to encourage more girls to enter the
competition. If the overall level of female participation increases, then in
the future there will be many more young women like Maryam Mirzakhani of Iran
(see the November 1995 Newsletter), who obtained a perfect score of 42
at the International Olympiad in Toronto.